As Trump’s Control Looms, a Look at Regency Wombs
“Oh!” cried Henrietta in surprise, as the door to the hall opened with a fierce bang. She had left the ballroom and been alone in the library with Lord Astley for ten entire minutes.
“Oh!” cried Henrietta once more . “Oh, I am RUINED!”
Lord Astley turned to see Henrietta’s glowering father, weeping mother, and a growing number of peering ballgoers gathering in the doorway. He took a deep breath then dropped to one knee.
“Lady Henrietta”, he said. “Would you do me the great honor of consenting to be my wife?”
Wot?
Ten minutes and you have to marry the girl?
I will confess that during the dark days of TFG’s tenure, I took to escaping into Regency romances. They were comforting, formulaic, true love always won, and the clothing and interiors were my favorites. But why did the protagonists always have to get married if they spent ANY time alone together? A Regency lady of quality was guarded more zealously than the contents of Fort Knox. She never left the house unaccompanied by a footman or a maid, she did not correspond with any males other than a relative, and she certainly did not go into darkened libraries during the ball. Her honor (i.e. virginity) was guarded with the honor and lives of her male family members, even unto death.
What kind of poppycocked malarkey was this? Did the Regency era have such a revered view of unsullied womanhood that no female was safe in public? Not really — maids and lower classes could saunter about in public without censure. Someone had to see that the work of the world was done, after all. So why did the wealthy and titled guard their daughters so carefully?
Because the womb was the conduit for generational wealth in England.
Estates were passed down, usually intact and entire, to the first born male in each generation. If you had spent 400 years amassing wealth and consequence, you wanted to be damn sure it didn’t go to a cuckoo in the nest. Of all the things an upper class bride must be, virginal topped the list. And it’s not even like marital fidelity was a requirement for the length of the marriage; after an ‘heir and a spare’ were provided, the wife was free to indulge her fancies. But it was paramount that the heirs be sons of the blood. Hence the zealous guarding of nubile young misses before marriage becoming the societal norm.
The GOP would like to regard your womb just as zealously. More so, even. Your womb, your birth control, your fertility treatments, your ability to end a pregnancy as a ten year old rape victim, your ability to survive a miscarriage … there is quite the list.
Why? Its not like you have £10,000 a year and thousands of rolling acres. But you do have something the GOP values more, and would like to squash — your independence.
Your financial earning capacity. Your ability to go to college. Your ability to escape domestic violence. Your ability NOT TO DIE because someone cloaking mysogyny in Christian rhetoric has written a law that compels doctors to dither and delay while your organs fail.
I am a 68 year old female. I came of age when birth control was easy to access and abortion was legal. Most people alive today can’t remember a time before that.
You know who can? Mitch McConnell and his cronies. Mitch was born in 1942. Birth control was available, but not able to be separated from the sex act (and therefore controlled by those who would fall pregnant), as the Pill allowed. Abortions were not legal. High schools girls went off to have ‘kidney treatments’ for a few months in neighboring states, or left school in shame to have a baby. For 100,000 years of human history, women lived at the mercy of their wombs. Mitch lived the first 30 years of his life at the tail end of that 100k era. He, Trump, and the GOP want to go back so badly.
So the GOP has joined forces with the Christian Right. They have wrapped their laws destroying our reproductive liberties in a bloody shroud of Christian piety. They cannot abide the idea that women could say ‘no thanks’ and live their lives without birthing children. They NEED those children to be born.
If you are white and wealthy, they would like you to populate the world with ‘their type’ so they need not fear replacement by the seething masses.
If you are brown, they would like you to populate the world with affordable workers, please.
If you are any color, they would like you to have more babies they can adopt. Don’t laugh. In 2013 I traveled to Austin and testified before a legistlative committee, speaking against a proposed bill to restrict abortions. Imagine my horror as a pert young thing testified after me “But we need more babies to adopt! Where will we get the babies to adopt?”.
This was years before the Handmaid’s tale made it to TV.
After you read this essay, go look up “Dominion Theology”. Then look up how many GOP politicians subscribe to it. Then make sure your voter registration is up to date, especially if you live in Red state.
And then, if you care at all, go vote. Be a brick in the wall. Be a grain of sand on the beach. Be a single voter among millions. But go be the straw that breaks this goddam camel’s back.
